


first i luv u

by RainySteve



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Pre-HOO, fluffy angst?, percabeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 18:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18299753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainySteve/pseuds/RainySteve
Summary: Percy wanted the first time he said it to be perfect. Annabeth didn't know if she needed to say it at all.





	first i luv u

It’d just tumbled out of his mouth. He’d said it so casually that not even Annabeth registered it at first, giving him a swift kiss as he peeled off to his sword-fighting lesson. She forced herself not to move until he closed the door to her cabin.

 

_“Ugh,” he’d said, checking the clock above her head. “I’m going to be late.”_

 

_“Go. I’ve got a ton of work here anyways.” She could feel him smiling behind her, wrapping his arms around her belly._

 

_“What? Am I distracting you?” He placed a kiss on the side of her neck, which she found bold. They’d barely been dating for a couple of months and things had certainly gotten less awkward between them, but the physical stuff was something Annabeth still found very much new._

 

_“No! I’m just busy and you’re late!” She swatted him away in an attempt to keep her dignity, but he caught her blush and laughed._

 

_“Fine then. See you at dinner.” He picked up the breastplate he’d propped against the table and leaned down for a kiss but not before saying. “Love you.”_

 

Annabeth replayed everything one more time for good measure. Yep, Percy had definitely said it. With a jolt she realized that she’d said...nothing. Percy had just told her he loved her for the first time and she’d said nothing back. Surely it couldn’t count, she tried to convince herself. It couldn’t count. He’d said it without thinking. _He’d said it without thinking._

 

The warmth of her blush seemed to spread down to her chest. Leave it to Percy to casually do something charmingly romantic without thinking.

 

She tried to go back to her plans, but she practically burned time until it was time for her next lesson. She didn’t attempt to pay attention to the target in front of her during target practice either, garnering some suspicious looks from Will and a few comments from the Stolls about her being around Percy’s horrible aim for too long. Obviously she loved him back, she’d realized it way before he had. Annabeth actually found it unfair that he could just go around telling her he loved her. Who did he think he was?

 

She let another arrow fly, this time hitting the target closer to the center. Was she going to say it back? _Should_ she say it back? Maybe she shouldn’t make a big deal about it. Last time she’d made a big deal about things she’d ended up feeling dumb. Sure, at the end of the day Percy had gone one step further and taken her to actual Paris for their one month anniversary, but they’d agreed to only celebrating yearly anniversaries from then on.

 

It just didn’t seem necessary for her. He knew she loved him, right?

 

“I’m not going to say anything,” she muttered to herself as she prepared the next shot.

 

“What?” Asked Connor beside her.

 

“Nothing. Shut up.”

  


**************

 

It’d just tumbled out of his mouth before he could stop it. He gave Annabeth a quick kiss and practically ran out of her cabin, trying not to panic about the fact that he'd just told Annabeth he loved her like it was nothing. He tried to convince himself she probably hadn't heard him as he sparred against Clarisse, but he knew better.

 

“C’mon, Jackson! Give me a real fight!” He caught Clarisse’s spear just in time with his sword, stumbling back by the sudden blow. If it weren't for the curse of Achilles he probably would've gotten himself impaled already.

 

“What's with you today? Thinking about the princess?” Clarisse laughed at his obvious blush but didn't have more time to mock him after Percy decided to actually give practice a try. Lately, Clarisse was one of the few people who could keep up with him, Annabeth was amongst the small group as well.

 

They spared for another hour or so, Percy barely holding back so as to get his previous conversation with Annabeth out of his head. Begrudgingly, Clarisse finally yielded. He’d barely broken a sweat but he could feel the now familiar exhaustion closing in. They both took a break, sipping ice cold water until the next group came into the arena, but that wasn’t for another hour or so.

 

Percy was still very much thinking about what he'd said to Annabeth, but he'd also just realized that the person he'd usually talk about this stuff about was gone. _Beckendorf would've known what to do,_ he thought. He'd had many of these moments in the past few months. Laughing at something and turning around to tell Beck but finding he was gone, or going to the stables to check on Blackjack and the rest of the pegasus but finding he couldn't stay too long without being overcome by the absence of Silena brushing Porkpie beside him.

 

He turned to Clarisse, who was pensively looking at the dirt under her fingernails. She'd grown a lot more quiet since the Battle of Manhattan.

 

Him and Clarisse had never been what one would consider “friends,” but they certainly weren’t strangers. They were both too proud to admit it, but they’d grown to care for one another over the years. To add to his already stressful day, Percy realized that he was worried about Clarisse. That he actually felt the need to talk to her.

 

“Wipe that look from you face,” she told him.

 

“What look?”

 

“You were making a stupid face.” Percy tried to answer but she held up her hand. “You’re right, all your faces are stupid.”

 

“Oh shut up.”

 

Clarisse chuckled to herself as she took another swing of water, but then they were back to silence. They had both clearly gotten enough of a breather, but neither one made a move to go back to their sparring session. Clarisse gave Percy a side glance as he tied his shoe and sighed, looking up for a brief second as if reaching for support.

 

“Spit it out,” she finally said.

 

“What?”

 

“Something’s up with you. So just say it so we can go back to training.”

 

He spluttered for a few seconds until she punched his arm and he said: “Ow! Okay fine!” Percy tried to hide his embarrassment. Of all the people he could talk to, he was really telling this to _Clarisse?_ “I may have...told Annabeth I loved her.”

 

She raised her eyebrow at that but, surprisingly only asked: “What? For like the first time?”

Percy nodded.

 

“And did she say it back?”

 

 _Oh Gods! Had she said it back?_ “Ehh...I kinda ran away before she could, I guess.”

 

Clarisse had to laugh.

 

“Wow. Thanks.” He waited for her to gather herself before continuing. “Well, aren’t you going to help me?”

 

“Who? Me?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Clarisse stopped to consider that for a second. “I mean...should you really be coming to me for this stuff? What about Grover?”

 

“I’ve barely seen him. He’s busy with all his Lord of the Wild stuff.” Percy was super proud of him, and would never get in the way of him fulfilling his dream job even if it did mean he missed him. He’d been great with emotional advice ever since they’d gotten the empathy link and was pretty much him and Annabeth’s biggest cheerleader (after his Mom of course). Being Lord of the Wild was just a full-time gig and, as much as Percy could tell he wanted to be there, he was gone most of the time.

 

Great, now he had _that_ to make him feel better.

 

Clarisse still looked like she wanted to run away from this whole situation, her brown eyes full of panic. Even she didn’t seem to realize that she’d been with Chris for over a year now. Percy suspected that Silena had helped, but they were actually a great couple. They’d helped each other out through the toughest times and made it through. He hated to admit it, but Clarisse could probably teach him a thing or two about relationships.

 

“What about the Aphrodite cabin?” She still asked. “They’re all love gurus in there.”

 

“Who? _Drew_?”

 

While the newly appointed head counselor looked the part, she still had a long way to go in terms of emotional maturity. The girl couldn’t even fess up to her huge crush on Celeste. Silena had always been the person you went to for that type of stuff, and she somehow trusted Clarisse above most everyone else.

 

“Fine,” Clarisse resigned, taking a seat beside Percy and loosening her armor. “What’s the big deal? You have to know Annabeth’s crazy for you, right? She’s been drooling over you for years.”

 

Percy and Annabeth had had conversations about this before, but he still found it hard to believe she’d liked him since they were _twelve._

 

“Besides,” Clarisse went on, “why does saying it suddenly make it real? Annabeth is stupid proud, she’d never say something like that so easily. But you’d have to be blind not to see how she shows it every freaking day. That girl loves you, dumbass. Happy?” She looked slightly sick at the fact that he’d made her use the word ‘love.’

 

“I just wanted it to be special. Even if it was corny and over the top... I want normal, stupid things.”

 

“You blew up a volcano the first time she kissed you, you guys are never going to be normal.”

 

“She _told_ you that?” Clarisse nodded, rolling her eyes at the memory. “I didn’t blow it up _because_ she kissed, by the way. It was a life or death situation.”

 

“Sure.” She sighed once again, clearly hating every second of the conversation but somehow sticking to it. “You guys are going to be okay, Jackson. You have to stop treating your relationship like it’s made out of glass, or like it’s this perfect thing that it’s not. Relationships are messy, especially you two.”

 

Percy wanted to argue. He didn’t know if he liked this ‘love guru’ Clarisse, after all. She made too much sense. Clarisse wasn’t supposed to make sense. How was _she_ the one calming _him_ down? He missed Beck and he missed Silena. The newest pendant in his camp necklace felt heavier than ever. When he looked at Clarisse, he realized she probably felt as stuck as he did. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be the one having this conversation with him, but they were the only ones left.

 

“She’s your best friend, right?” She asked him. “That didn’t stop once you guys started dating. You can talk to her.”

 

Percy opened his mouth, but held back whatever snarky comment he had lined up. Clarisse had actually been helpful. “Yeah,” he didn’t dare look at her, “you’re right.”

 

She gave a curt nod, for once not gloating at the rare admission and put her helmet back on. They proceeded to beat the life out of each other for an extra hour to get rid of the lingering closeness of their conversation and didn’t say a word as they parted their separate ways to the rest of their day’s activities.

  


************

 

Annabeth was surprised to find Percy walking up to her in their secret spot in the strawberry fields (the whole camp pretty much knew about it, but the novelty of catching them making out had worn out quickly enough and now they mainly gave them their space) later that day. He usually took the free hours between his sword fighting lesson and dinner to nap, and he didn’t seem any less sleepy today, but he still smiled down at her sheepishly and sat beside her. His head went immediately to her lap and her hand to his hair. He hummed in appreciation and closed his eyes.

 

It was definitely going to be impossible to get through her book now. It’s not as if she was getting a lot of reading done before he showed up, but his presence refreshed her memory on the morning’s proceedings. Had he really not noticed he’d said it? Either way, she wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up.

 

Annabeth assumed he’d fallen asleep until he broke the silence.

 

“So,” he started, “about this morning…”

 

“What about it?” She asked, trying to sound coy.

 

Percy cracked one bright, green eye open and she pulled her book further up so she didn’t have to see the suspicious arch of his eyebrow.

 

“I know you heard me,” he said. He reached up and caught her hand when she didn’t respond, bringing it down to his lips ever so slightly then letting it rest on his chest. He was fully staring at her now, and she couldn’t help but stare back. “I meant it, y’know?”

 

Annabeth really hoped he couldn’t notice how hard her heart was beating.

 

“I’m sorry it wasn’t more special or whatever.”

 

That got her out of her head enough to respond. “What are you talking about?”

 

He looked down at her hand, playing with her fingers as he shrugged. “I don’t know. I just kinda blurted it out and I know it’s supposed to be a big deal. I mean it _is_ a big deal.”

 

She bit her lip to keep from laughing, ignoring just how cute she found him in that moment. “Gods you’re stupid.” She leaned down and kissed him before he kept on rambling. It seemed to settle his nerves because he allowed himself to look back at her once she pulled away.

 

Annabeth put her book aside so she could cup his face with both hands, placing a loose strand of his thick hair behind his ear. “How is it that you actually manage to be charming?”

 

He knit his eyebrows in confusion. “What?”

 

“It’s really not a big deal, Percy. But, if it had been, you nailed it, okay?”

 

He propped himself up on his elbows, looking way too pleased. “Really?”

 

“Yes, yes. Shut up.”

 

He kissed her lips and then the corner of her mouth, trailing kisses as he tickled her neck with his nose until he made her laugh. He pulled away, laughing as well, and their faces were so close Annabeth could see the little sun freckles above his nose and the little scar at the corner of his chin. She wanted to say it back. She wanted to say it because Gods did she feel it. Even if it had been cold out, the absolute fondness -the love- she had for the boy in front of her would’ve been enough to warm her up all the way to her fingertips. The words just felt clunky in her tongue. They didn’t seem like enough and they couldn’t slip out with the ease they had for Percy.

 

She stared into his eyes and, a moment passed, but he seemed to get it. “I know,” he told her.

 

Things had been so touch and go with them the past few months. It was like learning how to be with each other all over again sometimes. But that was stupid, Annabeth realized, because it was Percy in front of her, not anyone else. It was her best friend. They’d both been trying to act they way they thought normal couples were supposed to, but they weren’t normal. Whatever was happening between them was a result of the four years they’d spent together before, however scary and wild they’d been. She could tell him anything. She didn’t even have to say it apparently. He spoke her language.

 

Annabeth had to say she was impressed though. Percy had always had an underlining of self-consciousness that sometimes went from adorable to harmful self-doubt. He tended to second-guess himself often and Annabeth was used to making an extra effort to make him accept any compliment she’d give him, always questioning if he was worthy of it.

 

This time he hadn’t hesitated, however, and it made her realize how much he’d matured over the years. Most of the time she resented how fast they’d had to grow up, but she couldn’t complain about this new improvement.  

 

He’d gone back to dozing off on her lap but he could feel her eyes still on him. “You’re staring,” he said, on arm thrown over his forehead and shielding his closed eyes from the sun. “Is it ‘cus I’m charming?”

 

“Gods, that’s going to go to you head, isn’t it?” He chuckled. Annabeth waited a second before saying: “I just can’t believe we’re at this point.” The point where they could both admit they were in love with each other and accept it and move on with it.

 

He opened his eyes, looking more serious than he had all day. “Yeah, I know.”

 

It was bittersweet; she knew it. Every milestone they had was something that all their fallen friends wouldn’t get to experience.

 

“I was talking to Clarisse today,” he said suddenly.

 

“Yeah? What is she complaining about this time?

 

He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. She was actually...helpful?”

 

She smiled at the surprise in his tone. She knew how helpful Clarisse could be. She’d known since he went missing a year ago and she was right there to comfort her. The combination of Chris and Silena in her life had done wonders to peel back her hostility.

 

“Silena would’ve been proud,” he said as if reading her mind.

 

Annabeth didn’t miss how strained his voice sounded. He’d gone to Clarisse as a last resort, and he seemed to be fully aware of that. He looked...guilty.

 

“Percy,” she breathed out. He looked up at her with the same vulnerability as before. _I know._ It was the most honest he’d seen him look since The Battle of Manhattan, with no forced happy smile on his face. He sat up quickly once she noticed it, trying to turn away but she caught his chin, pulling his to face her. “Hey.”

 

He looked so tired, more tired than any sixteen-year-old had any business looking. “I’m fine,” he told her.

 

“Are you?”

 

“Yeah. I just need to take a nap or something. I’m not used to this whole Curse of Achilles thing yet.”

 

“Percy, it’s okay if you’re not fine. You shouldn’t be.”

 

He set his jaw. “I said I was fine, Annabeth.”

 

After he’d been so open with her just seconds before, it was easy for her to look right past his lie. “I miss them too,” she told him, “I keep telling myself that I can’t feel bad because I made it and they didn’t, but I don’t think it’s that easy.”

 

Percy’s eyes took on that crystalline nature that told her he was holding back tears and she felt her own eyes sting. It was hard to comfort him when she’d been feeling the same way this whole time, trying to pretend like him.

 

“They were so close to making it, Annabeth. Beck was only months away from going to college. I shouldn’t have let Chiron put him on that mission.” he said.

 

“It was recon, Percy. We were all going on riskier quests than that. Chiron put him on it for a reason.”

 

Instead of easing his mind, her comment seemed to rub salt in a clearly still-open wound. He pulled away from her. “I shouldn’t have left him there.”

 

“Percy, you can’t-”

 

“No, Annabeth! I left him there to be blown up to bits and then Silena died thinking it was _her_ fault!”

 

He winced at his outburst.

 

Annabeth let silence fall over them.

 

She was used to feeling guilt. She’d spent the better part of her childhood feeling guilty over Thalia’s death. There wasn’t a lot of time to forgive herself once she came back either because suddenly everyone was dying around her. Somehow it was worse when it was her they were looking to for leadership.

 

Annabeth reached for his hand tentatively once again and he let her wrap their fingers together. No matter how hard she thought about it, this was something she’d never be able to fix. And it tore her slowly healing wounds wide open.

 

“I know everyone will say it wasn’t my fault, that there was nothing I could’ve done,” he went on, “but that’s bullshit. I made mistakes and people died, and it’s on me. I could’ve pulled Beckendorf off with me and willed the water to protect us both, I should’ve known that is was Silena and not Clarisse under that armor...I lost control at the bridge.”

 

Annabeth finally let her own tears fall down. She’d never said it outloud, no one had, but she knew firsthand how powerful Percy was and how little control he had over it at times. If she was being honest with herself, she’d always known it was him who’d collapsed the bridge. There was no way Michael could’ve run away in time.

 

She’d never be able to fix that.

 

Percy brought her hand to his back and she let it travel under his shirt to his Achilles spot.  He buried his face in her hair and she held him tightly as he allowed himself to cry in earnest at last. He wasn’t asking her to convince him of his innocence in what’d happened, he just needed her there because he knew she understood too. She missed all of them. She saw them everywhere.

 

Annabeth knew it was probably time to get to dinner, someone would start looking for them soon, but she didn’t want to put her brave face back on just yet. Percy pulled back slightly to look at her, his eyes impossibly aquamarine. They leaned into the kiss at the same time, but Percy allowed her to take charge. She kissed him breathless and then moved from his jaw, to his neck, remembering how flustered he’d made her in the morning and how natural it came to her now.

 

“I love you,” she whispered into his ear. Like always, she didn’t have the words to tell him exactly what she meant by it.

 

I love you, despite…

I love you, regardless…

I love you. Always.

 

“I love you.”

**Author's Note:**

> it's been brought to my attention that it's hard to kiss someone while they're on your lap but let's just use our imaginations here ok
> 
> *you can find me on tumblr as rainagainstmywindow *


End file.
